••• online communities
Adding MROCs to quant
MarketTools expands offerings with quick-hit communities
San Francisco research company MarketTools Inc. has added a market research online community (MROC) service to its portfolio. MarketTools Pop-up Communities is a full-service MROC designed for short-term engagements (two to six weeks) to allow clients to add qualitative insights to quantitative research studies.
MarketTools Pop-up Communities aims to provide the benefits of MROCs with fast, useful insights and a low total cost. MarketTools Pop-up Communities can be used to probe the results of quantitative research and to provide additional insights to existing research.
www.markettools.com
••• social media research
How’s your word-of-network?
Harris Interactive’s WON for measuring digital WOM
Rochester, N.Y., research company Harris Interactive has launched WON (word-of-network), a panel-based approach to social media measurement and influence designed to monitor the nuanced sentiment of a target market. WON offers quantitative categorization of comments about brands based on their positive, negative or neutral sentiments. WON also controls for volume of conversation around a brand and provides clients with a means to predict brand performance.
The WON metric is based on an opted-in panel of over 50,000 people. Harris Interactive monitors the panel to determine the extent of online conversation about a brand or topic, as well as key demographics, such as sex, age, income and any other key variables, of those who are contributing to the online conversation.
WON is a segment of Harris Interactive’s BrandLife Tracking program.
www.harrisinteractive.com
••• consumer research
Demystifying purchasing habits
DecisionVue 360 helps brands assess where they’re going wrong
Maritz Research, St. Louis, has launched DecisionVue 360, a research analysis product designed to minimize the guesswork involved in how customers purchase a product or service – or move on to a competitor. DecisionVue 360 aims to provide a customer-centric view at key decision points in a buyer’s acquisition journey and deliver feedback on how to adjust marketing strategy and tactics while there’s still time to intercede and capture sales.
DecisionVue 360 uses brand rejection analysis – providing insights into what factors cause a brand to be eliminated from consideration as well as when and why it is eliminated in different parts of the decision lifecycle process. DecisionVue 360 uses a proprietary cohort analysis to measure user engagement over time. This is intended to help marketers understand how the purchase cycle is working for their product category, their brand and how a customer’s consideration set changes over time.
http://maritzresearch.com/dv360
••• hispanic research
Acculturation 2.0
New model takes attitude and behavior into consideration for Hispanic acculturation
Marketing Research Services Inc., Cincinnati, has introduced a new Hispanic acculturation model to help marketers and advertisers segment the Hispanic market. Acculturation is the process where cultural traits are adopted, lost, combined and created. In turn, these traits have an impact on ideas, values, conventions and behaviors.
This model goes beyond relying primarily on language preference and demographics and incorporates attitudinal and behavioral dimensions. By incorporating these dimensions, the model aims to provide better insights on the Hispanic consumer, their perceptions and their shopping behavior.
www.mrsi.com/hispanicacculturation
••• mobile research
Mobile Posse offering grows by two
Three companies partner to launch mobile survey and panel solutions
Research companies SurveySwipe, Seattle, and iPinion, Columbus, Ohio, have partnered with McLean, Va., mobile solutions company Mobile Posse to launch MobiSurvey and MobiPanels.
MobiSurvey is intended to allow marketers and consumer-research analysts to survey owners of all phone types, including smartphone and feature phone users that do not have data plans. MobiSurvey provides full account management support.
MobiPanels is designed to use the MobiSurvey tool to reach a large audience at either a local or national level. It offers a nationwide panel of more than 10 million mobile consumers and a growing list of panels based on various customer segments, including Hispanics; African-Americans; superstore shoppers; new mobile handset owners; pet owners; e-book readers; coupon users; and back-to-school shoppers. Custom panels can be developed within 48 hours and be targeted to a specific demographic or audience type.
www.mobileposse.com
••• consumer research
Profiling the shopper
Segmentation tool helps retailers make sense of consumer behavior
Chicago research company SymphonyIRI Group Inc. has released EconoLink, a segmentation solution intended to group shoppers into a series of unique profiles to enable consumer packaged goods retailers and retailer marketers to better understand how their categories, brands and stores are performing. The profiles include Downtrodden; Cautious and Worried; Start-ups; Optimistics; Carefree; and Savvy Shoppers.
The segmentation solution aims to assist marketers as they develop new product, promotion, merchandising, pricing and store layout strategies to cater to each audience profile. EconoLink also offers details about shopper strategies ranging from pricing preferences; use of in-store technology; level of home research through both traditional and online activities; couponing strategies; and retailer preferences and provides a look at shoppers’ financial attitudes, demographics and the impact of the recession on each group’s shopping decisions.
www.symphonyiri.com
••• customer experience
Comparing with competitors
CEBenchmarks allows clients to see how they measure up
Maritz Research, St. Louis, has debuted CEBenchmarks, a customer experience measurement benchmarking tool designed to enable companies to understand how they stack up to competitors on key customer experience measures, both within and outside their industry sector.
CEBenchmarks collects data on a continuous basis and delivers quarterly benchmarks on 31 categories of customer experience activity across several industries, including automotive; retail and restaurants; hospitality; insurance and investments; wireless; cable and Internet; and banking and finance.
With the benchmarking tool, clients can determine how they fare versus competitors on key metrics and selected attributes; examine differences within important contexts, such as transaction type; discover which elements of their customer experience need improvement; and look at best-in-class comparisons to leading brands in other industries.
www.maritzresearch.com/cebenchmarks
••• mobile research
MarketTools goes native
Mobile research solutions enhance Survey Manager offering
San Francisco research company MarketTools Inc. has included mobile market research solutions as native components of its MarketTools Survey Manager market research platform. MarketTools mobile research solutions aim to give clients more ways of reaching and engaging with their audiences on smartphones and tablets, namely for in-the-moment shopper research, mobile advertising testing, event evaluation and path-to-purchase research.
Studies can be initiated using e-mail invitations, text invitations, QR codes and more and can implement a variety of question types.
www.markettools.com
••• diy research
Set-it-and-forget-it solution
Peanut Labs debuts SurveyTool.com for simplified DIY
San Francisco research company Peanut Labs has released SurveyTool.com, a DIY survey software designed to offers access to Peanut Labs’ sample pool of respondents, sourced from a network of social media and gaming sites worldwide such as Facebook, EA, Pogo and IMVU.com. Users can launch their surveys directly to over 50 million consumers across hundreds of Web sites and target the demographic segment of their choice.
With 24-hour access, SurveyTool.com also allows users to conduct tracking or periodic surveys automatically. Once the survey is created, users can control the frequency.
Sample is available in the U.S., U.K, Australia and Canada, with plans to expand into additional markets in 2012. Users can register for a complimentary personal account with limited access to survey capabilities.
www.surveytool.com
••• customer experience
Pinpoint opportunity for improvement
Tool designed to help companies act on customer feedback
Boston research company Chadwick Martin Bailey has debuted Pinpoint Suite, a customizable collection of Web-based tools to improve the usefulness of customer feedback. Pinpoint Suite is designed to integrate with existing customer feedback measurement programs to let managers build and strengthen customer relationships and lead performance improvement.
Pinpoint Suite aims to engage managers at each level of the organization and is customized to support specific roles within the company. At the executive level, Pinpoint Suite’s insights and tools help executives prioritize decisions, set plans and allocate resources. For managers, Pinpoint Suite lets them close the loop on systemic issues by providing tools that identify problems to fix, list potential solutions, enable a planning mechanism and track the results of the actions taken. Real-time insights let frontline staff identify, understand and resolve individual service failures as they occur.
www.cmbinfo.com/pinpointsuite
••• b2b research
Partnership brings D-U-N-S to panels
Independent business info aims to add further segmentation attributes
Research Now, Plano, Texas, has launched a screening tool designed to provide users with additional insight on B2B respondents. The tool is intended to work in conjunction with the pre-screening process to provide clients Dun & Bradstreet’s D-U-N-S Numbers and SIC codes on B2B respondents from Research Now’s global panels. Clients can then use the D-U-N-S Number to link back to their own data and uncover further segmentation attributes for more in-depth analysis. If a client does not currently have the D-U-N-S Number integrated into their data, they can work with Dun & Bradstreet to cleanse and match their data to D-U-N-S Numbers.
www.researchnow.com
••• online research
Could Sunrise give you perspective?
Companies collaborate to launch online listening tool
Research companies StrategyOne, Washington, D.C., and Crimson Hexagon, Boston, have partnered to develop Sunrise, a daily multilingual digital media measurement and analytics tool. Sunrise aims to provide clients with a perspective on the conversations and underlying trends that impact the attitudes of key stakeholders.
Sunrise offers narrative-driven analytics comprised of observations, insights and curated online conversations and media; tracking, trending and analysis of messages, topics and industry concepts; sentiment and mention volume tracking across competitors; brand and corporate reputation descriptors tracking; and comprehensive analysis of relevant conversation from online news, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, message boards and other sources.
www.strategyone.com
••• ad research
Crowd Science bolsters ad targeting offering
CITRUS sees social media and brand awareness updates
San Jose, Calif., research company Crowd Science has added two features to its CITRUS platform for online publishers. Make it Social and Brand Target are designed to allow users to segment their audiences and target advertising to them based on social media engagement and brand awareness.
Make It Social allows publishers to segment and target audience based on social media engagement (Influencers, Engagers and Non-users) for social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. These new audience-targeting options aim to allow publishers to differentiate their audience and advertisers to better tailor their creative and messaging.
Brand Target enables publishers to gather detailed audience data about awareness or ownership of specific brands. Publishers can then offer brand advertisers a way to better pinpoint the audience most likely to respond to branded campaigns or upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
www.crowdscience.com
••• mobile research
Ipsos panels go mobile
Survey Analytics tapped to support Ipsos Loyalty Mobile Network
Research companies Ipsos Loyalty, New York, and Survey Analytics, Seattle, have partnered to offer clients mobile research panel capabilities through the Ipsos Loyalty Mobile Network. The Ipsos Loyalty Mobile Network provides clients the ability to recruit mobile research panels using a controlled, by-invitation-only method. Panelists are sourced from the customer databases of partner companies and panelists can talk to each other, come up with their own ideas and have other panel members vote on them. Customers can also be recruited on-location using QR codes. The Network will use Survey Analytics’ Survey Swipe and Survey Pocket mobile applications for mobile panels and in-person data collection.
www.surveyanalytics.com
••• e-tailing
Relevantor launches e-marketing tool
A new content optimization service on the scene
New York marketing company Relevantor LLC has launched its Web marketing service designed to address bounces and abandonments using relevant content optimization. Dubbed Relevantor, the service aims to give site administrators a variety of ways to regulate how their content is presented to each site visitor and minimize the risk and cost of targeting a diverse audience with a generic landing page. A site equipped with Relevantor can display the content each visitor is likely to find most engaging based on factors including geographical location; time of day; organic search terms; referring Web sites; and previous visits.
www.relevantor.com
••• research incentives
Pay it Fund Forward
App aims to simplify payment process for researchers and participants
Ixaris, a London electronic payments company, has launched Fund Forward, a payment application designed to allow businesses to send funds using virtual and plastic cards to anyone in more than 200 countries. Fund Forward is a cross-industry application providing a simple, customizable solution for payment in the market research, travel and e-commerce industries.
Fund Forward is intended to provide open access to the Visa, MasterCard and global money transfer networks. With Fund Forward, a business’s customers will be able to instantly send money through a fully-branded Web application that supports multiple languages and currencies.
www.ixaris.com
••• Briefly
State College, Pa., research company VideoMining Corporation has launched the fourth wave of its C-Store Shopper Insights (CSI-4) study. The program will use VideoMining’s in-store measurement and analytics in a national panel of 120 stores with cooperation from 12 convenience retailers.
www.videomining.com
Mobile Posse, a McLean, Va., mobile solutions company, has announced an owner insights research program for mobile carriers and device makers. The New Handset Owner Research Program aims to give handset manufacturers and carriers behavioral insight into new handset owners by surveying over 100,000 new handset users that have had their phone less than 48 hours. Executed monthly, the program covers more than 100 different devices by 10 different OEMs across four carriers.
www.mobileposse.com
Chicago research company Synovate has released the findings from Media Atlas China, its syndicated cross-media study conducted in China, surveying 66,000 consumers across 88 tier-one-to-tier-five cities and rural areas across mainland China.
www.synovate.com
Kinesis Survey Technologies LLC, Austin, Texas, has added a quick-poll feature to its Kinesis Community market research online community solution. The community quick polls are intended to support use from both computer and mobile devices. The addition of multimode quick polls aim to enable researchers to insert short research questions with single or multiple choice answers into a community Web page that displays appropriately according to the utilized device and browser.
www.kinesissurvey.com
Denver research company Qualvu has launched the Qualvu Affiliate Program to give firms a mobile app for in-the-moment video consumer feedback collection and an online platform for online video-based qualitative research analysis. The program offers firms an opportunity to sell their own custom, digital qualitative research solutions without a large up-front investment or a long development cycle.
www.qualvu.com
Stockholm, Sweden, research company Tobii Technology has launched a free Tobii plugin for Okemos, Mich., research software company TechSmith’s Morae usability software. The plugin is designed to augment eye-gaze data with metrics measured by Morae to provide psychological analysis that reveals insight into innate, unspoken user behavior during usability testing.
www.techsmith.com
Salt Lake City research company Mindshare Technologies has added a QR code feature to its enterprise feedback management platform.
www.mshare.net
San Francisco research company Userlytics has released a white-label version of its flagship platform. The white-label offering aims to enable users to integrate Userlytics’ proprietary testing and analysis solution into existing research tools or to offer it as a stand-alone, private-label product. Firms have the flexibility to run the solution in house or to outsource some capabilities such as participant recruitment and QA testing of video results to Userlytics.
www.userlytics.com
Chicago research company SymphonyIRI Group Inc. and New York audience marketplace developer Legolas Media have partnered to launch a platform designed to allow consumer packaged goods marketers to create customized audience segments; use them immediately in advertising buys of premium inventory on chosen Web sites; and optimize marketing campaigns on the fly.
www.symphonyiri.com
Palo Alto, Calif., research company SurveyMonkey has built its own panel, recruited from its pool of survey takers.
www.surveymonkey.com
San Leandro, Calif., research company Opinionmeter International has expanded its network of exclusive licensees with the addition of Leading Minds, a Lebanon business consulting firm. Leading Minds will introduce Opinionmeter’s customer experience management tools to the Lebanese market research sector.
www.opinionmeter.com
Stream Research, Hertfordshire, U.K., has launched My H(app)y Life, a qualitative syndicated study designed to examine what consumers need from their apps. The research will cover the U.S., U.K., Italy and France, with 12 one-on-one ethnographic interviews and three focus groups to be conducted in each market.
www.stream-research.com
New York research company Affinity LLC’s American Magazine Study (AMS) will begin reporting total brand audience estimates for magazines on a quarterly basis in 2012, beginning with the spring report. AMS surveys over 60,000 consumers annually to report the total unduplicated reach of magazine brands cross-platform.
www.affinityresearch.net
Research companies Vision Critical, Vancouver, B.C., and CreaMetrix, Moscow, have partnered to create a Russian community panel.
www.visioncritical.com
Miami research company eCGlobalPanel Corporation has been renamed eCGlobal Solutions. Along with the new name, the company has also debuted a new logo, Web site (www.ecglobalsolutions.com) and tagline: Enabling Smart Connections.
The Association of Minority Market Research Professionals, Chicago, has launched a new Web site at www.ammrp.org.
Forte Research Group, New York, has designed a company Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/Forte-Research-Group/136657396417619.
NIPO Software, an Amsterdam, Netherlands, research software company, has added a second Silver competency to its Microsoft Partnership for Web development.
www.niposoftware.com